#oneaday Day 712: Cognitive surrender

I wouldn't say I check in on Penny Arcade regularly, but when I do, I am always entertained — and I always find myself scrolling through quite a few comics and blog posts. Today, my attention was captured by this post from Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, and particularly this paragraph:

Sometimes I don't know how to feel about something because my moral superiors have not yet made a super long video. They don't always make a video about the thing I need, though. Like, I don't know if someone is still bad or if they've been exonerated. Since we don't trust any structure that would provide exoneration, and objectivity is illusory, since the law is merely another arena to sift power dynamics anyway, my guess is that their good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. Speaking of power dynamics, It must be neat to have the reins of a parallel legal system whose norms kaleidoscopically shift at a rate of one million shibboleths per second. The main issue is that it's not clear which games I'm allowed to buy. All I can do – all anyone can do – is spin very quickly in place while refreshing YouTube for the next sermon. I'm currently ablur.

man in blue crew neck shirt wearing black framed eyeglasses — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com. I choose to believe this guy's hair only does this when he shouts.

Tycho is specifically referring to the hoohah over Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the recent new game from ZA/UM, the company behind the exceedingly brilliant Disco Elysium, and a company mired in controversy for the way it subsequently treated the actual people who made Disco Elysium. I don't really know much more about it than that, and to be perfectly honest, I don't really give enough of a shit to look into it further. I'm sorry, I just don't.

You see, as you might expect in such a situation, moral grandstanding over the way ZA/UM has behaved in the past has been overshadowing any meaningful discussion of Zero Parades itself, with the reviewers who took it on its own terms and gave it a positive assessment — apparently it's very good! — getting lambasted by people who think they are The Most Correct Person in the Room.

The phenomenon Tycho is talking about is the disconnect one eventually starts to feel when constantly confronted by this: the situation where you want to talk about how much you like something that you have taken on its own terms, divorced from "context" — regardless of whether this was a deliberate move, or just because your particular life and social circumstances meant you had never come into contact with any "controversy" — but find yourself having to bite your tongue, because you know it's not "acceptable" to like the thing for one reason or another.

I'm not even talking about particularly controversial material here — like, even the most perverted hentai connoisseur knows when not to bring up his collection of Rias Gremory boob bouncing gifs — but rather, situations like we have here, where an entity that is tangentially connected to the thing in question is deemed to have done something so unconscionably unacceptable that it taints anything and everything associated with itself, regardless of whether the thing itself is any good or not, and regardless of whether the people who actually made the thing had anything to do with the controversy.

A lot of this stuff spreads via social media and, as Tycho says, via video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. A lot of people look to "influencers" (ugh) as opinion leaders, and wait to learn whether it's "acceptable" in the eyes of someone they believe in before even considering engaging with it. Essentially it's a form of cognitive surrender; they willingly give up their own ability to make their mind up about something in favour of blindly following everything their opinion leader of choice says and does. And this sort of person tends to hold a grudge for a very long time indeed; as Tycho says, it's exceedingly rare for anyone branded with a scarlet letter to be exonerated, while the reverse is also true: someone who has been a beloved figure for years can be quickly turned on, torn to shreds and then left to rot, never to be forgiven and never to regain their former regard, regardless of whether or not they clearly make an effort to make amends for past wrongs.

Honestly, at this point it's exceedingly tiresome. There are certain people on Bluesky I've had to mute just because their constant response to people Just Enjoying The Thing is to bring up the controversy du jour and, in many cases, cast exceedingly unflattering and negative aspersions on the people who continue to Just Enjoy The Thing. In just the last week it's happened not only with Zero Parades, but also with Forza Horizon 6, and I'm sure there will be plenty more. There have certainly been plenty of prior examples, including numerous instances of the "we will never forgive them" situation.

Look, I get it. In this revolting, shitty world we live in, it's nice to think that you have some principles and that you're willing to stand up for them. Everyone should have at least a few issues that they're willing to stand up and be counted on. But there comes a point where you're just being a tedious scold at people who are simply trying to derive some joy out of existence, and who really do not have the time or energy to give a shit about every single little issue in the world, particularly when the issues that you supposedly care about are in the extreme periphery of the thing they are trying to enjoy — and seemingly not even directly connected at all, to the average person who is not huffing Internet fumes 25 hours a day.

I'm sorry, but it is just like that. If you do try and give a shit about every single little issue in the world, you will quickly end up driving yourself insane, driving everyone who might have once been your friend away, and never, ever experiencing a day of happiness in your life ever again.

On top of that, if your idea of Being A Good Person is scolding random strangers on Bluesky rather than actually getting out into the world and making some sort of meaningful difference to the lives of people who need it, then you might not actually be A Good Person. You just want people to believe that you are.

Life is too short for that. So if you want to play Zero Parades, I don't care. If you want to play Forza Horizon 6, I don't care. If you want to boycott everything ZA/UM and Microsoft ever put out, I don't really care, either. But if you start actively getting in the way of people who simply want an escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — or to build a warm, kind community of people who want a collective escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — then I'm sorry, but I don't really want to know you.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 711: What to do if you inadvertently garlic your dishwasher

We had a little accident the other day: we put a jar that formerly contained minced garlic into the dishwasher. If you have never done this before, trust me, you don't want to; it leaves your entire dishwasher smelling like absolute death, and everything inside it also smelling like absolute death.

close up shot of garlic — Photo by Vadim Koval on Pexels.com

The funny thing is, I'm sure we've washed one of those jars in the dishwasher before (Andie likes to keep jars to put things in) and not had this problem. But oh Lordy, this time did we ever have a problem. And I was left to deal with it, as Andie was away on a course or something today.

I thought just running the dishwasher again might help. It did not. So I went out to Sainsbury's with the intention of buying some dishwasher cleaner, not entirely convinced that I had ever seen dishwasher cleaner for sale there, but their website assured me that it was a common thing that was usually in stock, so I took their word for it, hoping that the fact I couldn't actually check stock in a specific store wouldn't mean a wasted journey.

Thankfully, they do indeed sell dishwasher cleaner, so I picked some up, along with one of those hanging stinky things that are a bit like the things you put in your toilet, but for the dishwasher. I ran the dishwasher with the cleaner in it. Better, but still not quite right. I contemplated using the second dishwasher cleaner that had come in the double-pack I had bought, but instead thought I'd try an alternative solution. The Internet recommended putting a glass with vinegar in there, as well as spreading vinegar around inside rather liberally. So I did so, using apple cider vinegar, as that appeared to be the most commonly recommended remedy.

Now the stench has mostly gone. It now smells of dishwasher cleaner, and the hanging stinky thing, and perhaps just slightly of old garlic. It's not an entirely pleasant smell, but it's better than the stench that hit you in the face as soon as you walked in the front door that we had before.

Still, at least I feel like the dishwasher will actually wash things, now, rather than infuse them with that particularly rancid odour. So that's something, I guess.

So lesson learned: 1) do not wash stinky garlic jars in the dishwasher, because you will regret it, and 2) if you failed to take 1) to heart, some combination of dishwasher cleaner, hanging stinky thing and apple cider vinegar might get rid of the worst of the pong. And if it doesn't, I don't know… try pissing in it or something?

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#oneaday Day 710: Less than hot stuff

A while back, I tried all the Atari-branded hot sauces from a UK-based company called Sauce Shed. I really enjoyed them! I even made a video on the subject.

Since I enjoyed making this video — and one of my work colleagues is always referencing my delayed response to the Haunted House-branded sauce — I thought I'd order a selection of the Street Fighter II-themed sauces that the company had put out. This was back in February.

I remembered that the Atari sauces took a while to get to me, but were worth the wait, but this is getting a little ridiculous at this point. Then I happened to see this story shared — the company has apparently been hit with a "winding-up" petition from a client who paid them a substantial amount of money and never got what they ordered… and they weren't the only ones, either. So it looks as if the company may be in trouble, and I probably am not going to get my Street Fighter II hot sauce. This is both a shame, and £45 down the drain that I probably won't get back — but I have sent an enquiry, at least, to see if they'll provide a refund. I'm not holding my breath.

All this is a real shame, because the Atari sauces were really delicious. They covered a wide range of different sauce types, but there wasn't a single one among them that I thought was unpleasant. Some, like the Yars' Revenge hot sauce, I wish I had ordered more bottles of while I had the chance, because that one was really nice, blending the sharp kick of a hot sauce with a pleasantly fruity afterglow. Sauce Shed aren't going under because they were bad at making sauce. It does, however, appear that they may have been bad at business.

I'm not angry at them. Shit happens, particularly in the volatile world in which we live today, and I can't imagine it's easy running a niche business like a hot sauce manufacturer that specialises in custom branding deals. I just wish that they had bothered to communicate, like, at all. Maybe take down the websites that allow you to purchase things if they knew they weren't going to be able to fulfil orders — or at the very least, mark the products as "unavailable" so people don't pay up for them and then end up disappointed.

Because that's what I am, more than anything. Like I say, I'm not mad. £45 is not chump change, but it's whatever — particularly these days, when a trip to Tesco to get a few snacks can easily end up costing more than a brand new video game. I'm mostly just disappointed that I don't get to try a new selection of delicious hot sauces that are tenuously linked to some sort of video game.

But oh well. Another day will come, and there will be more hot sauce. Not just yet, though, it appears.

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#oneaday Day 709: Countdown to holiday

It's not long until Andie and I go on holiday to Center Parcs, a now-regular(ish) tradition for us. We're going for the full "Monday to Monday" experience again, and we're also going to have a spa session again, as we really enjoyed that last time.

This is where we stayed last year. This year will look similar, but with a different number.

I am looking forward to it, but I'm also mildly stressed, because just before we go away, we have two big, challenging projects at work to finish off. And they kind of need to be finished by that time. I am semi-confident that we will make it, but it is cutting things a bit fine, and I probably won't feel better about things until they are over the line, out the door and various other metaphors that mean "finished and not my problem any more".

The challenging thing is that in my new role, which partially involves QA, I am not in a position to be able to "fix" things myself — I have to just report the issues as clearly as I can, and then hope that they end up fixed. Usually they do, but sometimes it takes a few attempts at explaining something before they are finally resolved.

The projects are in a reasonable place at the moment, but not ready to go out of the door by any means. And so I suspect we're in for a busy couple of weeks; the end result will definitely be worth all the stress and hassle, but dear Lord, I will be well and truly ready for our holiday when time's up.

I'm trying not to stress about them too much. I'm not the only one working on these things, and the other people working on them are smart, talented people who know what they are doing. I am just part of a process, so I just need to ensure that my part of the process is completely successful, and with communication that is as clear as possible. Everything outside of that is outside of my control and responsibility, so that is just what I need to continue focusing on.

But yeah. I am really looking forward to our holiday. Center Parcs is such a nice environment to escape to for a little while; it really does feel like getting away from the rest of the world into your own, pleasant little bubble. I am going to enjoy just hanging out in the forest, perhaps going for a few walks around the place, spending some time in the pool and, of course, having a blissful few hours in the spa. We don't have any particular activities planned as yet — we'll probably do a few things here and there, but for the most part, it is just nice to get away from everything. The world in 2026 is a noisy, chaotic and rather unpleasant place to be, so being able to go somewhere that just feels like you're far away from all that stuff is something that I'm very much looking forward to.

From tomorrow, there's three full weeks of work to survive before I can enjoy this. It's going to be three challenging weeks, I'm sure, but as I say, the end result will be well worth it — and the opportunity to go and have some well-earned relaxation afterwards will also be well worth it.

After all, if you're going to have a holiday, you might as well have one when it will be particularly beneficial to your mental health, right?

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#oneaday Day 708: Proper adventuring

One of the things I suspect is incredibly divisive about Final Fantasy XI is that everything takes a lot of effort.

I suspect these four know one another. Or, more likely, are one person multiboxing.

You get a quest, it will inevitably involve finding some object that is a relatively low-chance drop from a very specific monster that is deep in part of a dungeon that is exceedingly inconvenient to get to.

You reach the level cap, you have to complete one of these quests every five levels until you reach 99 — though thankfully you only have to do this once per character, not once per job.

You get your "subjob", to add abilities from a second job to your main one, you have to level that as well as your main job — though only half as much, since it caps at half the level of your main job.

There are times when all this feels a bit wearisome, particularly when compared to Final Fantasy XIV, which at times feels like it's keen to take as much "friction" out of the entire process as possible. But if you think about Final Fantasy XI in different terms — not as a "theme park"-style MMO, but simply as a more traditional RPG — it makes a lot more sense, particularly now you don't have to be dependent on other people for a lot of the "main scenario" side of things.

Dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV are spectacular affairs, but they are theme park rides — completely linear, the same every time. Dungeons in Final Fantasy XI are much more elaborate: maze-like structures filled with dead ends, hidden secrets and varied encounters with monsters. The complete lack of signposting for quest-critical items — usually this involves finding something marked "???" when you target it — means that you have to actually explore these places thoroughly… or look at a guide, of course. But the longer I play, the more interesting the prospect of just exploring becomes. And the more I feel like the game has been designed around this.

If you look at a lot of Final Fantasy XI guides online, you will inevitably see a focus on levelling as fast as possible, then steamrollering your way through all the content. But the way I've been playing, it feels a lot more natural and a lot more like it's the way it was intended to be played. I've had a couple of instances where I've had to sneak around monsters much tougher than me to find a useful item, but for the most part I've found that if I treat the game like a regular, offline RPG — that is to say, fighting my way through monsters as I proceed through a field area or dungeon rather than avoiding as many as possible — it means that progress comes naturally and without you feeling like you're having to make an inordinate amount of effort to achieve that progress. As a result, the game is fun rather than a chore.

There are still points where it feels like you are "roadblocked" in certain ways — right now I'm dealing with a particularly complicated main scenario mission that involves finding specific items in three specific dungeons, along with a level cap quest that is demanding much the same sort of thing — but only in terms of the ongoing narrative. In terms of actually playing the game and engaging with its mechanics, I feel like I'm constantly doing interesting stuff and seeing new places rather than just going through the motions.

I'm going to make it through this game! I'm excited to see where it goes! Now, if I can just find an Orcish Crest, a Quadav Crest and a Yagudo Crest, plus pieces of Magicite from their three respective bases, I should be good to go and beat up the Shadow Lord. So that's what I'm going to do today, I think.

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#oneaday Day 707: My neighbours might be racists

A while back, our next-door neighbours put up a flagpole in their front garden. Not long afterwards, there was a Union Flag flying from it. I realise that this sort of thing is fairly commonplace in the US (albeit with a Stars and Stripes instead of a Union Flag, obviously) and is intended to denote patriotism, but unfortunately, here in the UK, a private individual doing such a thing in the middle of what is essentially a council estate, particularly at a time when there is no international football on the telly, often means only one thing: they might just be a teensy bit racist.

the flag of united kingdom — Photo by Peter Muscutt on Pexels.com

Granted, this is marginally less likely with a Union flag than with a St. George's Cross, the England flag, but it is still something that causes me concern.

Not long after this flagpole was put up, my wife said that when she had been outside, the Union Flag had been replaced with a rainbow Pride flag. Not long after that, the flagpole was relocated to my neighbours' back garden, which leads me to believe that the flying of the Pride flag was not their choice.

Last night, I happened to be out in the garden and I saw there was something else on the new flag besides just the usual Union of crosses. I waited for it to flap around so I could see it, and I made out the words "RESTORE BRITAIN".

My heart sank. Any time people talk about "restoring" a country, it is inevitable that what they actually mean is "get all the non-white people out of here". I thought it was a Reform UK slogan or something, but no, it turns out Restore Britain is its own thing, arguably even more hateful than Reform. I present to you selected highlights from their website, which I am not linking to because I've already had to sully my Internet history with it; I don't want to have to put you through it also:

For 30 years, this country has been run into the ground by an establishment that does not care about the interests and concerns of ordinary British people.

Mass immigration, economic collapse, woke ideology, and the relentless creep of radical Islam – everywhere you look, this country is in decline, and has been for a long time.

It took just one paragraph before mentions of "mass immigration", "woke ideology" and "radical Islam". At least one thing you cannot accuse Restore Britain of is subtlety.

Reverse Mass Migration.
Mass immigration has been a disaster for Britain. It has left us poorer, less safe, and less culturally and socially cohesive. By 2030 native British births will account for fewer than 50% of total births in Britain. By 2070, native Brits will be an absolute minority.

Dipping into their "policies" page, it's not long before we get to some Great Replacement Theory nonsense, unsurprisingly. Naturally, these "millions" of "mass immigrants" must be deported.

Use Tents, Not Hotels
Establish modular, tent-based holding facilities for so-called “asylum seekers”. These will comply with basic humanitarian standards (e.g. shelter, sanitation, medical triage), but will be deliberately austere and designed for short-term containment.

Ah yes. When I think "basic humanitarian standards", I also immediately think of the word "containment".

Make Energy Cheap, Reliable and Scalable.
Energy is the lifeblood of any developed first-world economy. First and foremost, then, it should be cheap, reliable and scalable. If that means investment in fossil fuels, so be it.

None of those woke renewables! Solar energy turned Barry's son transgender, don't you know?!

Ban the Burqa. Both the burqa and the niqab are fundamentally un-British and have no place on our high streets. Countries across Europe, including France, Belgium and Austria, have already banned the burqa.

You knew it was coming.

Sex is Biological.
Biological sex is not a social construct. It is a fixed trait, determined by genetics and encoded in every cell of the human body.

Men and women are morally equal, but not physically identical. These differences must be acknowledged, respected, and allowed to inform law-making.

Men must not be permitted to enter women-only spaces, including lavatories, prisons, and sporting contests. Anything less puts women and girls at risk.

Objective truth, not ideology, must guide governance.

In view of these principles, the Gender Recognition Act must be repealed. The state must no longer issue legal documents that permit individuals to change their sex in law. Biological sex will be recognised as immutable and recorded accordingly.

And this one.

Make Britain Safe Again.
No-nonsense policing that does what it needs to do.

Widespread stop and search back.

Accusations of racism will stop nothing, up to and including strict sentences for anyone caught carrying a knife.

I like that in this one, they're like "yeah, we know this is racist, and we don't care".

Launch an Independent Inquiry into COVID-19 Vaccines.
We would establish a truly independent inquiry into the safety, rollout, and long-term effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, especially on young people and those coerced into taking them.

Yep, they're anti-vaxxers, too. It's amazing that this one party appears to be ticking absolutely every box for being a fucking awful human being.

Restore the Right to Self-defence.
Law-abiding citizens must have the full legal right to use reasonable force – including lethal force if necessary – to protect their home, family, and property from illegal intruders without fear of prosecution.

But hey! You can kill a burglar, particularly if they're a brown person.

Repeal the Online Safety Act.
Platforms hosting lawful content must be shielded from government pressure to censor. We would require transparency in content moderation and prohibit state-directed takedowns of legal speech.

The Online Safety Act law threatens the integrity of investigative journalism, whistleblowing, and political debate.

Fears of liability lead to over-moderation, driving smaller players out of the market and empowering Big Tech.

For balance's sake, I will note that they do have a point here, albeit for all the wrong reasons. The Online Safety Act simply doesn't work. These fuckheads think it was introduced to "censor" them "just asking questions" and all that shit. But no. It was just a shit idea.

You can hopefully see now why I feel a little concerned about my next-door neighbours proudly flying a flag for this fucking hateful group of shitheads.

Honestly, at one point I felt a bit bad for stereotyping the guy (and I suspect the flagpole is almost entirely the guy's handiwork) based on the amount he seemingly drank, and how often I hear him yelling obscenities at his wife and kids. But unfortunately it seems like I might have been correct.

So that's fun!

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#oneaday Day 706: The Garlean Territorial Anthem goes with everything

One extremely private habit that I have developed which I have not really admitted to anyone before is a tendency to sing stupid shit when I am in the house by myself. By "stupid shit" I usually mean "narrating what I am doing at the time to the tune of something unrelated". And, over the years of doing this — it's an uncontrollable impulse at this point — I have determined that The Garlean Territorial Anthem for Gyr Abania and Surrounding States: The Measure of our Reach from Final Fantasy XIV is absolutely ideal to put stupid words to.

If you are unfamiliar with this stirring piece of music, here is the original:

The original lyrics run thus:

Beyond majestic mountains
Across the emerald dale
On march the ivory standard
United we prevail

From distant shores of Othard
To lakes of Aldenard
The light of mighty Garlemald
For e'er our guiding star

It continues in similarly "patriotic but built on stolen land" fashion after that. It's a whole thing. What you can hopefully tell from listening to the above, however, is that it's a song with a relatively simple melody line, and fairly simple rhythms. This makes it absolutely ideal for use when you are singing about something stupid and/or disgusting.

Please feel free to replay the above video, while singing the below words to it.

I'm going to take a dump now
I'm going to have a shit
I'm going to shoot poo out my arse
And fill the toilet up

I'm going to take a shit now
I'm going to have a dump
The poo will come right out my bum
And God, it really stinks

I laugh in the face of rhyming schemes. But there's something innately satisfying about having a big ol' dump and bellowing that at the top of your lungs in a deep baritone. I recommend you try it. Even if you have a high voice. I suspect a glass-shattering, vibrato-filled soprano will also fit the bill nicely.

I don't remember exactly when I discovered that The Garlean Territorial Anthem for Gyr Abania and Surrounding States: The Measure of our Reach was ideal for this purpose, but I find it very difficult to stop myself from doing this any time I am in the house by myself. I don't even have to actually be taking a shit to want to sing it. It just sort of comes out. There are other versions of the lyrics, too, mostly relating to bodily functions and/or ablutions, but I will keep those to myself. A girl's got to have a bit of mystery.

Naturally I do not do this when anyone else is present, because I would be absolutely mortified if anyone heard what I was doing and the words I was singing. And not just because I've always been rather self-conscious about my singing voice. I also generally make sure the windows are shut.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I'm admitting this right now. I just thought you might find it amusing.

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#oneaday Day 705: Resist mediocre anti-intellectualism

Every few months, it seems, the collective community of the social media platform Bluesky suffers from a minor existential crisis, usually relating to some commentator or other not having found an audience on the platform and thus writing what they probably believe to be a withering putdown, but which more often than not ends up coming across as a bit sad, desperate and pathetic.

The most recent case comes in the form of someone who posits that Bluesky, as a whole, has been bad for American political discourse, because it has effectively siloed off pretty much the entire "Left" into their own little bubble. This isn't an entirely inaccurate view of the situation, but you also have to bear in mind that this largely occurred because Twitter, under Elon Musk, made a specific effort to silo off pretty much the entire "Right" into their own little bubble. Consequently, Twitter is more of a shithole than it's ever been in the past, and Bluesky… well, it's occasionally all right, occasionally prone to the sorts of behaviour that made me sour on Twitter in the first place. At least for the most part you don't have to put up with Nazis and "grok what is this" underneath every post.

I'm not here to talk about the relative merits of Bluesky itself though; rather, I want to focus on a post from Ars Technica's Kyle Orland, itself a response to a post from journalist Faine Greenwood, semi-seriously commenting on what people really need to do if they want to use social media to get a political message out:

Kyle Orland: This is true in cultural criticism too, I'd argue. Writing in general (and longform writing in particular) is just an increasingly niche part of how people in general are consuming media and getting info.

I'm still proudly focused on that niche, but I'm under no illusions about my relative reach.

Quoting Faine Greenwood: I will reiterate the point made by Jamelle Bouie: if you really wanted online political influence, you'd be making vertical video. You'd be learning how to do little booty dances while talking about political theory. You'd be mastering doing BTS fan-cams while talking about anti-capitalism.

I see this viewpoint expressed a lot these days, and while it is disappointingly not entirely wrong about the situation, it does, to me, reflect a defeatist attitude to culture: the assumption that there can be only one dominant form of media, and that in this case, it is lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time.

I, as I have made pretty clear on numerous occasions in the past, fucking hate lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time. I find it actively insulting to my intelligence, and incredibly offputting when someone posts, like, say, "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:" followed by a video of their face pressed up against the camera yelling whatever their important announcement is. I never find out, because I am actively repulsed by that kind of video.

Aside: in a Discord I frequent, one poster continually reposts this guy's stuff, and dear Lord I find it the most offputting thing imaginable. Nothing to do with the guy's appearance; I just don't want that many faces yelling at me.

A screenshot of "Randy Johnson's" YouTube channel, which consists entirely of vertical video clips of an elderly man talking about various topics.

Anyway, the thing I find frustrating about all this is: who the fuck decided that the only thing we're allowed to do now is lowest-common-denominator, vapid, attention-deficit short-form video with karaoke-style captions updating one word at a time? Who the fuck decided that writing is out, particularly long-form writing? Because I certainly fucking didn't.

I like reading! I like reading long things! I like writing! I like writing long things! As far as I'm concerned, a good piece of writing is much more likely to stand the test of time than vertical video of someone's grandpa wittering on about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie! And I find it near-impossible to believe that I am alone in this!

I am part of a generation who grew up with books, magazines, and websites that posted long-form writing. As far as I am aware, my entire generation hasn't suddenly dropped dead overnight, so why the fuck can't we have at least a basic bit of respect for our tastes rather than this content slurry that is shat out at great force and speed every day?

"Oh, but Pete, people are still serving your niche," you might say. Are they? Are they actually though? Because last time I checked, games media sites were being shut down or turned into thinly-veiled gambling advertisements at a frightening rate. I used to have magazines and websites that I read on a regular basis; today, even people who I used to respect as people who always seemed that they'd keep blogging, come rain or shine, have all but vanished from the Internet, leaving us with little more than the garbage left behind.

Perhaps those are the people who have the right idea. Give up on trying to "find an audience" on the Internet, and just retreat into a world where these issues don't exist. There are still a few magazines out there — although gaming-specific ones are thin on the ground. There are folks making fanzines and suchlike. New books continue to be written — some of them even without being AI-generated! So perhaps the answer is just to retreat, quietly, and continue to enjoy the few good things that do, apparently against all odds, still exist.

It just feels like giving up a space where I always felt like I could "be myself" and express myself freely has been taken over, completely, by the supposedly "cool kids" who are actually vapid fuckheads with nothing of any real substance to contribute to culture. And that really sucks. "The Internet" used to be somewhere that felt like I was home, where I was among my people. I haven't felt that for a long time now.

I don't feel like we should have just rolled over and let this happen — but that is what happened, and there doesn't appear to be any way to turn back from it now. And no-one appears to be in any great hurry to correct this situation.

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#oneaday Day 704: Vana'diel progress report

I am pleased to report that I have reached level 50 in Final Fantasy XI. This is not the level cap, but it is a significant milestone, as it was, I believe, the original level cap when the game first released. As time went on and various expansions released, players got the opportunity to increase their personal level cap in increments of 5 levels at a time, though each one of these milestones requires you to complete a tricky and/or time-consuming quest. I'm in the middle of one of those now, which will allow me to level up to 55 when I'm done.

I'm enjoying the game a lot, though my desire to attempt it without a guide was a foolhardy endeavour. Final Fantasy XI was always designed with "community" in mind, and built on the assumption that said community would share information with one another and help each other out, and as such there are a lot of things it just doesn't tell you. It's a lot better in this regard than it used to be, primarily thanks to the "Records of Eminence" feature, which gives you a series of objectives to accomplish that can guide your progression, but you'll still often be given a mission that tells you to go to a particular zone and find something in that zone, with absolutely no indication whatsoever of exactly whereabouts in that zone the thing is to be found. There is no minimap and no quest marker feature in Final Fantasy XI, so you're either off to find a needle in a haystack yourself, or consult the community (which now, of course, also includes comprehensive wikis) and be able to focus your efforts a bit more.

There are still one or two roadblocks that require actual interaction with a human being. One of the missions for Windurst requires that you get through a door called the "Sealed Portal", which is colloquially known by the community as "Three Mage Gate". The reason for this is that the originally intended method of opening this door was to gather a party containing a white mage, a black mage and a red mage and get them to stand on the appropriate marks on the floor, which would open the door. This was subsequently updated to only require someone with the "Portal Charm" key item — which, naturally, you get just after the mission in which you would first need it — to make things marginally easier and less dependent on wrangling an entire group.

These aspects aside, though, the game has been eminently soloable so far, thanks to the Trust system. You're given some decent Trusts right from the get-go, and more are unlockable quite easily. There are some borderline overpowered ones available without too much difficulty, too, but with the number you get to add to your arsenal very quickly, you can pretty much build a party however you like to play, and use the characters you find most appealing. My only slight beef with the system is a narrative one; many of the Trusts you get early on are characters that you probably won't have met yet, and this makes it tricky to feel a sense of attachment to them. Because, in the context of Final Fantasy XI's story, Trust magic is dependent on you having a strong bond with a particular person, this feels a bit dissonant, but you soon learn to deal with it — and after a while, you'll be able to get together a party that feels like it consists entirely of "story" characters anyway.

It's definitely a very different sort of game to Final Fantasy XIV. It's not actually turn-based, but with its pacing it might as well be. It's not a game where you attacking requires you to be constantly pressing buttons to unleash combos, unlike its follow-up; instead, it's more about equipping your character well, ensuring they have good training in the skills they need to succeed at the challenges ahead of them, and approaching combat encounters carefully and thoughtfully. Sure, you "do less" on a moment-to-moment basis, but it's a different kind of satisfying to successfully clearing difficult encounters in Final Fantasy XIV; it's less about skill with the buttons and more about traditional RPG-style number crunching. I'm not saying either way is "better" — both games are very good at what they do — but it is interesting to note quite how different they are from one another now I'm deeper into XI than I've ever been.

My next big milestones for Final Fantasy XI will be breaking a couple of level cap barriers, and then completing the base story from the original game, which culminates in a big fight against the dreaded Shadow Lord. There's still a lot to do after that, though, and most folks seem to agree that things start getting really good story-wise after you've got through the base game's material. I'm looking forward to it — and at the rate I'm going, I should be getting through it at a decent pace, too.

I'm glad I finally decided to do this. Final Fantasy XI has kind of been a "white whale" for me in terms of completion, so I knew I just had to make the time to play it and do it properly. Now that I'm doing that, I'm having a really good time. I doubt I'll get too hardcore into its "endgame" stuff — my main priority is to beat the story, and after that I will probably return to XIV — but there is plenty to do just on the journey from 1 to 99. And that's absolutely fine with me!

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#oneaday Day 703: Peepo!

I finished a rewatch of Peep Show the other day, confirming for myself that I had indeed never watched it right to the end. Now I have, and I came away from it with some thoughts that I wanted to share, so that's what I'm going to do today.

Peep Show, for the unfamiliar, is a Channel 4 comedy show starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, written by Sam Bain, Jesse Armstrong and Andrew O'Connor, with occasional contributions from Mitchell and Webb themselves. It's the show that put Mitchell and Webb on the comedy map for many people, and is noteworthy for its main gimmick of being shot entirely in "first-person" from the perspective of the various characters, including the occasional ability to hear their thoughts — hence the name. We're getting to "peep" into the most intimate parts of their lives, including their private thoughts, in a way that simply isn't possible in "reality".

From the beginning, Peep Show sets itself up as a show where its two main characters are heavily, heavily flawed. Mitchell's Mark Corrigan character is stuffy, socially anxious, nerdy and, at times, rather arrogant, while Webb's Jeremy Usborne is also arrogant, albeit in a different way, self-obsessed, selfish, unambitious and, at times, borderline deluded about the possible directions his life could go in.

Early in the series, one could argue that Mark is somewhat set up to be the "protagonist" of sorts, since much of the ongoing storylines follow his attempts to woo his work colleague, Sophie. As time goes on, though, the show becomes more generally about how both Mark and Jeremy find themselves on their own separate pathways towards self-destruction, each coming at the concept from a different direction. Mark approaches it from the angle of repeatedly fucking up the genuinely good things that happen in his life, while Jeremy's obsession with drugs, alcohol and sex to the almost complete exclusion of building a "normal" adult life makes his trajectory clear pretty early on.

In many ways, Mark and Jeremy are polar opposites, but they are also a lot more similar than they would care to admit. And, as the show progresses, one comes to realise that perhaps the "El Dude Brothers" perhaps aren't as close friends as they thought they were; indeed, the very last line of the show comes from Mark, looking at Jeremy, reflecting on the many trials and tribulations they have both faced — and inflicted on one another — and thinking "I simply must get rid of him". The implication, of course, is that Mark will never be able to get rid of Jeremy — not because the pair of them are incredibly close friends, but because they're stuck with one another, thanks to each other's most awful tendencies having rubbed off on each other to an exceedingly unhealthy degree.

Thus one could probably say that Peep Show is about toxic masculinity. And indeed there are plenty of examples of that throughout the show, with the main ones being Mark's erstwhile boss, Alan Johnson, who is an obnoxious "alpha male" business leader type — although later shown to have enjoyed success primarily through luck and charisma rather than actual talent — and Jeremy's friend "Super Hans", who in many ways is far more fucked up than Mark or Jeremy will ever be — though at times he does seem to have his shit together a lot more than the pair of them.

Interestingly, though, neither Mark or Jeremy are examples of toxic masculinity in quite the same way. Jeremy likes to talk a big game and make out that he's always getting women, but we see repeatedly throughout the show that he is completely incompetent in developing close interpersonal relationships. Mark, meanwhile, has aspirations for a while of being a big balls businessman like Johnson, but over time comes to accept that he is, at heart, a fairly unremarkable person — and that that is not necessarily a bad thing.

To be sure, the pair of them do engage in behaviour that is plenty toxic, often in the name of pursuing masculinity. But a lot of the time they do this for the sake of living up to a misguided sense of "ideals" rather than because they actually feel that way. Neither of them have a clue how to navigate the challenges that life repeatedly confronts them with, and neither of them really know how to be a stereotypical "man", in terms of the unattainable ideal they both have in their minds. And this leads them both down destructive paths that ultimately bring them both to their own downfall — multiple times.

But Peep Show isn't a bleak tragedy. While I'm sure many people watching the show do feel a bit bad for Mark and Jeremy, particularly by the time the final episode rolls around, the central duo are, at their core, figures to laugh at. The show is a comedy because the situations they keep getting into are so ridiculous, but I think a lot of the humour lands because it's plausible. You can picture people you know going down some of the roads that both Mark and Jeremy fling themselves headlong down. You might even have broken off friendships with similar degrees of toxicity that the pair of them demonstrate.

It's a cautionary tale in many ways, then. Neither Mark or Jeremy are "villains" as such, nor are either of them fundamentally "bad people". But one thing Peep Show demonstrates more than anything else is that it is very easy to find yourself circling the drain if you don't make at least a bit of an effort to get your life under control — and that, as you grow older, if you don't find a good balance between "things that make your life better" and "things that make you feel good in the short term", where those two things are seemingly in conflict with one another, you will almost certainly find yourself bitter, twisted, and if not alone, then certainly stuck with someone who is bad for you, and that you will never, ever be able to get rid of.

A downer ending? Perhaps. But it was perfect for the story the show was telling. It would have been easy to give everyone on the show a "happy" ending for the final episode, but as harsh as it sounds, I'm glad they didn't get it. They got the ending that they deserved — and that has pretty much ensured I will remember the way things concluded a lot more vividly than if everything was all neatly resolved and tied up with a little bow.

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